Will Grocery tax elimination defund the Parker Police Department? In a word...YES. Note: There is no "grocery tax" but instead our Sales Tax includes Food / Drink products purchased among other things. Groceries make up a significant portion of revenue for the Town. But for simplicity I will refer to this piece of our sales tax in blog as grocery tax.
Some candidates running for elected office are proposing removing the “grocery tax“ the Town of Parker has currently.
Since I like to research topics and have done so in the past as a Citizen and now as a candidate for Parker Town Council, I have reached out to various staff and elected officials to get the truth on what a future could look like with no grocery tax.
In addition, I was invited to listen in on the Town of Parker Council Budget Retreat for 2021 which basically confirmed my own research.
Here are some facts:
* Grocery tax is a big percentage of revenue to the general fund from which personal expenses come from and eliminating the grocery tax will DEFUND our Police department, along with Public Works which impacts infrastructure and traffic, and other services.
* Grocery tax revenue is currently trending up
* The Town of Parker's Finance Department rough estimate of total annual sales tax related to grocery sales is between $7 - $10 million. Grocery Sales tax, while its own line item, has a large presence as well in General Merchandise (Costco, Walmart, Target) and currently there is no way to separate food and non-food from there
Also, a lot of visitors or people who live in Stonegate or Pinery for example that do not live within Town Boundaries pay this grocery tax. They use our infrastructure or services such as Parker Rec or our roads, but the only way to recoup expenses such as maintenance from that segment of the population is through sales tax.
Summary:
While I am not a fan of taxes, the grocery tax has saved our butts a few times in the past. When Costco opened, that saved our revenue stream during the Great Recession in 2008-2009, along with other similar businesses. During the Pandemic lockdown last Spring, sales tax revenue went up 8% compared to April 2019, mostly due to our grocery taxes since everyone was home. Lone Tree, for example, does not have a tax on food but does have a mall and corporate headquarters. During the Pandemic last Spring with everything shut down, they are $10 million+ in revenue shortfalls. This is a cautionary tale. Source: Lone Tree article
My worry is if there are no replacement for this revenue stream at the get go, then our Town services would take a hit, which includes our Police department. This is confirmed now by the Finance Director.
In my opinion any talk of removing the grocery tax should be tabled due to all the reasons mentioned above and revisited, if appropriate, once everyone can understand the ramifications this has on the Town's revenue stream and the Services they provide.
Any action that could defund our Police Department, our Public Works and other services has to be researched carefully.
Diversifying our Economy is a worthy exploration to help generate more revenue, but that is a different Todd Talk.
A much more worthy discussion is looking into our RTD tax and working with RTD to provide more services while reducing the 1% tax or getting out of RTD as a whole, which is an option but has other ramifications but that will be saved for another post.
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